We shape our buildings, and afterwards our buildings shape us.” These words, uttered by Winston Churchill during debates about rebuilding the House of Commons, capture truths central to environmental psychology and the phenomenology of space: architecture both embodies and shapes our beliefs and practices. The architects of Chartres’ cathedral, Oxford’s spires, and America’s skyscrapers created buildings through which they curated cultures because no space is neutral and every space nurtures. 

This insight, that spaces become places within which people are shaped, has guided the transformation of Workman Hall into Templeton Hall. Once completed, Templeton Hall will include seminar rooms designed for conversational pedagogy, common spaces to support friendships, a library for study and research, hospitable spaces for guests, a gallery for visual art, and a hall for concerts, lectures, and worship. These spaces will become places that shape future generations of students and scholars, participants and performers, visitors and visionaries. 

But how will Templeton Hall embody our beliefs and shape our hearts and minds? First, by supporting our commitment to pursue the True, Good, Beautiful, and Holy within a deeply formative community. The Templeton Honors College views education as holistic formation for life-long flourishing. That kind of formation uniquely happens in the fulsome community this building will foster. Its classrooms will support Templeton’s pedagogical commitment to small seminars and its common spaces will encourage virtuous friendships and leisurely conversations. 

Templeton’s commitment to formation in community distinguishes it from institutions that reduce higher education to an academic factory producing disciplinary specialists for the research university, a job center training skilled employees for the labor market, or a political foundation breeding the “right” kind of voters for election day. These merely modern approaches flatten the humanity of students into a single dimension. Instead, Templeton honors the full humanity of our students and treats them as capacious images of God intended to flourish in every sphere of life—private, public, and professional. 

Our commitment to the intellectual, moral, aesthetic, and spiritual formation of students alongside their professional preparation situates Templeton within the long tradition of Christian liberal arts education. The classic design of Templeton Hall embodies our belief in the goodness of tradition and articulates the College’s commitment to the sifted wisdom of the past over the shifting sands of the present. 

Templeton’s “Great Questions” curriculum introduces students to the collected wisdom of philosophers, theologians, poets, artists, and authors. Our commitment to begin contemporary questing with classical wisdom has been abandoned by many universities, hampering students by cutting them off from the curated insights and conversations of past ages. Templeton’s discerning affirmation of tradition is manifest in the traditional building materials and forms chosen to shape Templeton Hall. 

The new building will also bear witness to the enduring goodness of Beauty, another belief abandoned by contemporary culture and absent from utilitarian classrooms that resemble hospital examination rooms more than hospitable living rooms. Instead, Templeton Hall will offer students an academic home of ambient beauty and reinforce our curricular commitment to Beauty and the arts, reminding us we are created in the image of an incarnate God who loves incarnate beauty that can bring refreshing delight to our weary souls and carry the Gospel to a weary world. 

We look forward to seeing how Templeton Hall shapes future generations of students through virtuous Community, wise Tradition, and winsome Beauty. May this beautiful new space become a place that glorifies God, manifests his abundant goodness, and inspires students and scholars to worship with heart, soul, mind, and strength for generations to come.